Sometimes people ask me what I do. And when such questions are asked, I say, with pride and a wide grin, ‘I am an unemployed graduate.’ I add, ‘for the eighth time.’ It is not true though. I am unemployed only in terms of what employment is usually taken to mean: a steady job with a regular income. Sometimes I ...

Cricket fans may have heard of Sir Henry Newbolt’s oft-quoted poem where a cricketing metaphor is used to offer courage to a soldier in desperate circumstances. They may have read at least the first verse, which contains not a clue about the miseries of wars about to be lost.There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --Ten to make and ...

I last heard from my friend and brother Ahmed Issa on Tuesday the 24th of October, 2023. I sent him a link to an article I had written titled ‘Let us write beautiful poetry.’ He replied with a heart emoji. The following day, my sister sent me the following text: ‘Ahmed’s cousin is dead. She was 21. He had to ...

Questions are the respiratory system of children. I doubt if anyone thought of this before or, even if the thought crossed the mind, wrote it as elegantly. This is why I find John Freeman’s Dictionary of the Undoing fascinating. One could open the book to a random page and find mind-blowing observations written in heart-blowing ways.John has dedicated an essay ...

There was no ‘Harvard’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts before September 8, 1636. Indeed, at that time, there was no Cambridge either, at least not in the state of Massachusetts. Apparently it was settled as New Towne in 1630 by the Massachusetts Bay Company but was organised as a town not only in name six years later when it was picked as ...

It was in early 1986 that I first encountered Ivan Shadr's bronze sculpture of 1927 titled 'The Cobblestone is a Weapon of the Proletariat.' It was on the front page of a newspaper whose name I cannot remember now. Some unknown Trotskyite, either a student or a lecturer at the Dumbara Campus of the University of Peradeniya, must have subscribed ...

www.compassion.orgA song wandered through the yellows of October and through random conversations in a coffee house. It came from a different century and a different war. It is from one of my favourite musicals, ‘Hair,’ where one of the central characters, Claude Bukowski, following a tumultuous few hours in the company of a group of anti-war, LSD-popping young people in ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 250th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] Rain, sun and wind, all on their own, can bring down mountains. Takes ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 249th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] The late poet Indika Gunawardena wrote two poems about spiderwebs. In one he ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 248th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] What lies beyond the last frontier, one may ask. What flying space remains ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 247th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] Revolution. It means, essentially, a turn. A turn right back. As in 360 ...

White phosphorus raining on Gaza['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 246th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] There’s no one way to talk of horror, even ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 245th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] Human beings are frail creatures. Human collectives are no better. And yet, there ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 244th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] I have seen just three of Bernard Bertolucci’s films, The Little Buddha, The ...

John Hennessy is said to have the rare gift of being able to pick a line of poetry that constitutes the most appropriate response to an interesting point in any conversation. A poet, editor and teacher, John would of course have a treasury to draw from, but he does so sparingly, as is best. One day, my sister and his ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 242nd article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] ‘The middle of nowhere' is a phrase often used to describe what is ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 241th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] ‘Serenity now’ is a phrase made popular by its use in the NBC ...

[This article was first published in www.sapannews.com, the media platform of the SOUTHASIA PEACE ACTION NETWORK] On Sunday, the 19th of November, 2023, two teams will face each other at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. The winner will lift the 2023 Cricket ODI World Cup (Men). Eight teams would have been eliminated by then. Fans of all competing countries would ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 240th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] Lin-Manuel Miranda, the American songwriter, actor, filmmaker and playwright who created the sung-and-rapper-through ...

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 239th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]He’s no more. No more curtain calls. The stage is empty. The movie is ...